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Have you noticed consistent spikes in your CPU usage, even when you have no programs running? Moreover, are the spikes all in one CPU core (as shown in the Task Manager), rather than distributed between cores? It could be the case that you have a rogue background process eating up precious CPU cycles. To see if its the case, follow these simple steps:

1. Open up the task manager by right clicking on the taskbar and selecting “Task Manager.”
2. Then, click on the “Perforance” tab, to confirm you’re having this issue. (It should look similar to the above screenshot.)
3. Next, select the “Processes” tab. Sort by CPU by clicking on the CPU column. The entries should have CPU entries in descending order.
4. The process at the top of the list is your culprit. You can do a Google search on the process name to find out what it is, and if it safe and easy to disable it.

In my particular experience, the rogue process was “bigfix.exe”. According to AuditMyPC.com,

BigFix.exe is a tool used to download support information from hardware manufacturers and software vendors. It will also perform checks over your system and try to locate configuration errors and security vulnerabilities. If you find that this process causes problems for your system, it should be terminated.

bigfix.exe is an application that does NOT appear to be a security risk

The Process Server database currently registers bigfix.exe to Bigfix.

So, it came down to a program that was installed with Windows, and running at startup. It was non-essential, so a simple uninstall of BigFix solved the problem.

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